- Former officials Bennett Walsh and Dr. David Clinton have settled criminal charges related to a coronavirus outbreak at a Massachusetts veterans facility.
- They were facing criminal abandonment charges after at least 76 people were killed at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home.
- The judge accepted their pleas of innocence and continued their respective charges pending a three-month suspended sentence.
Two former employees of a Massachusetts veterans home where at least 76 people died in the nation’s worst COVID-19 outbreak inside a long-term care facility settled their criminal lawsuits Tuesday without going to jail. .
Bennett Walsh, the former director of the Holyoke Veterans Home, and Dr. David Clinton, the home’s former medical director, were sentenced to five years after the Massachusetts Supreme Court reversed a lower court judge last year and reinstated the charges. He was charged with criminal negligence. .
Their case was the first criminal case filed in the country against anyone involved in a nursing home death during the pandemic.
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Prosecutors had asked for a guilty plea and a three-year suspended sentence, including one year of home confinement. They cited poor conditions at the facility, understaffing, and the need for a sentence that “deserves real consequences.”
Holyoke Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke, Massachusetts, May 29, 2018. Two former employees of a veteran’s facility where at least 76 people died in long-term care facilities during one of the nation’s worst coronavirus outbreaks settled criminal lawsuits Tuesday without going to jail. (Patrick Johnson/Republican, via AP, File)
But lawyers argued that the court had learned that this was early in the pandemic, when the dangers of the disease were not fully understood, and the facility, like many nursing homes at the time, was hampered by staffing shortages. argued that it needed to be considered. Staffing and limited testing. He also claimed that Mr. Walsh alerted him to the situation at his home, but that the alert was not passed up his chain of command.
They asked Hampden Superior Court Judge Edward J. McDonough to allow each count to proceed pending a three-month suspended sentence. A plea admitting the facts of the case could result in a guilty verdict on each count.
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The ruling sparked national outrage.
“Today, the justice system failed the families who lost their loved ones at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home,” state Attorney General Andrea Campbell said in a statement. “I am disappointed and disappointed in the court’s decision. I want these families and veterans to know that my office has done everything in its power to hold those responsible. We will continue to be vigilant about elder abuse and neglect cases.”
Susan Kenney, whose father Charles Rowell died at home from COVID-19, appeared in court and expressed shock at the verdict.
“It’s disgusting, it’s absolutely disgusting,” she said. “It’s just an injustice. There’s no accountability. They need to be made an example. We all knew the virus was spiking. Don’t contaminate people. The basics of what not to do. “and they had already been done” because their leadership was terrible. ”
Mr. Walsh and Mr. Clinton pleaded not guilty in 2020 to charges stemming from a decision in March of that year to combine two dementia units with residents who tested positive for the coronavirus and those without symptoms.
A 2022 state inspector general report found that Mr. Walsh lacked both the leadership and temperament to run such a facility when he was hired in 2016. The 91-page report covers the period from May 2016 to February 2020, just before the pandemic. attacked with all his might. He was also highly critical of the process that led to the hiring of Mr. Walsh as superintendent.
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Mr. Walsh, a former Marine who resigned after being charged with criminal charges, had no supervisory experience in a medical setting or skilled nursing facility when he was hired. However, according to state law, housing superintendents at the time were not required to have such experience.
In 2021, McDonough dismissed the charges. Mr McDonough said there was “insufficient reasonably reliable evidence that the medical conditions of the five veterans in question would have been materially different had these two dementia units not been combined”. discovered.
But last year, the Massachusetts Supreme Court reinstated the charges. In their decision, the majority of judges said the facts presented to the grand jury showed that Mr. Walsh and Mr. Clinton violated elder abuse laws, and that Hampden Superior Court Judge Edward McDonough Jr. erred in dismissing the charges. The court found that there was substantial reason to believe that the person committed the crime.
In 2022, Massachusetts agreed to pay $56 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by families of deceased veterans.
